


In the Desert, Where Almost Nothing Grows

by DaughterofElros



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angry Pining, Gardening, House Sitting, M/M, Pining, Plants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:46:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28973808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterofElros/pseuds/DaughterofElros
Summary: Michael agrees to plant-sit while Alex is away on a trip for work. He stubbornly keeps that promise when when the work trip becomes a long-term deployment...and ends up building a garden far more extensive than the one Alex left him to care for.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 52
Kudos: 132
Collections: Michael Guerin is a Grower





	In the Desert, Where Almost Nothing Grows

The thing with life or fate or whatever, is that it’s a capricious motherfucker.

Michael Guerin already knows this, and he doesn’t need anymore object lessons. Which is why it’s a particularly crap deal that right around the time he’s worked himself up to maybe be ready to go on a date with Alex Manes, see if their explosive chemistry survives a quiet dinner somewhere, Alex gets called to Washington D.C. for two weeks.

He finds out about it because Alex comes by the junkyard a couple hours after he’s been told. They’ve been doing that more- a beer at the fire pit, giving each other relevant updates. Sometimes venturing into some raw topics that have plagued them throughout their tragic pasts. It’s enough to make him know he’ll never not be in love with Alex Manes…but it might also be enough to convince him that there’s a chance of something working out, if they don’t choke it off again first. If they’re careful about it.

It pierces him straight through the fucking heart to hear that Alex has to leave- to be reminded that there are still years of his life that he signed away, that he’d said it was for Michael, but Michael hadn’t fucking asked him for that. Yeah. That’s a topic they haven’t tried sorting through yet. It’s going to be a doozy when they do. Which apparently won’t be until after Alex comes back from his multi-week assignment.

Alex’s expression is hunted, wary as he tells him, and Michael’s trying not to fly off the handle at things these days. His immediate reaction is to want to yell about it, get angry, lash out because it hurts and he wants to snarl. But because he doesn’t want that to be his reaction, he pivots immediately, says the first remotely-supportive thing that comes to his mind.

“I can look after things when you’re gone. If you need.”

“Yeah?” Alex asks, clearly surprised. “You’d do that? I thought you’d be pissed at me for leaving.”

“I mean,” Michael tries to keep the sarcasm in his voice to a level that’s light, playful. “Does it piss me off you’re going to be gone with like… a day’s notice because you sold your soul to the military for the next several years for no good reason? Yeah. I don’t love that. But it’s just a couple of weeks, and I get that this part, at least, isn’t your choice. So, instead of blowing up about it, I’m turning over a new leaf. Offering to help. Coach, put me in.”

The reference to Michael and team sports has the desired effect. It makes Alex break the intense stare he’d levied, shake his head and snort out a laugh despite himself. He’s doing that half incredulous, half amused thing that he does.

“Yeah, alright. Come by tomorrow morning, I’ll give you the key and the code, show you which plants to water.” He takes a sip from his beer, goes quiet as he stares into the flames. “Thank you,” he says. “For understanding. For offering.”

He looks up at Michael, and the look of trust, the look of hope there…Alex looking at him like that…it’s more important than telling Alex that he still doesn’t understand, he’s not even sure he can get to accepting. But for more moments of Alex looking at him like that, like he’s hoping just as much as Michael himself is…he’s willing to try.

Alex’s house isn’t unfamiliar to him, but he takes it in with a new eye in the morning light, the things Alex cares about that will be his to maintain during the next two weeks— the houseplants, but also the little garden that Alex has out back— peppers and some vegetables and some native plants. The peppers are close to ripening- Alex tells him that if they do, he should take some, give some away— there should be more than enough for him when he gets home.

Alex has him practice the alarm codes, shows him all the things he might need to know. His bag is packed, sitting in the hallway, ready for him to report to base, and then to D.C. Michael’s eyes keep straying to it, feeling flashes of disquiet, even as he fakes his way through being the responsible sort of person who knows how to house-sit.

“Hey,” Alex says. “When I get back, can we…” He trails off.

“Can we what?” Michael tries to keep the hard edge out of his voice. He’s not exactly sure he succeeds.

“I don’t know… talk? Like…really talk?

“Yeah.” Michael can feel the constant state of tension he’s in around Alex abate a little bit. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“I would too,” Alex says softly. Which, of course he would, because he’s the one that asked for it in the first place. But Michael takes it in the spirit it’s meant- mutuality, being on the same page for once. Maybe having a collection of same pages to be on some day. He bites his lip, lets his teeth rake across it to keep from saying something rash, ruining the moment. Alex’s eyes follow the movement, dark and heated.

For a moment, it almost feels like they might hug, might touch, even kiss. It feels…significant, like they’re on the cusp of something. But there isn’t time, and so they turn away with the want still building, movement dictated by practicality and an abundance of caution.

While Alex is away, Michael swings by his house to water the plants, check things over. He picks the first pepper a few days in, waters things the way Alex said. He stops early on one of the houseplants. It’s got enough water he thinks… and its roots are in danger of rotting out. He isn’t sure how he knows that, he just…does if he focuses enough. Outside though, it’s been hot and dry. The plants are thirsty. He gives them more of a drink. They need it, aren’t really at peace until they get it. 

A week and half in, and he’s kind of liking this gardening thing. He thinks maybe he’ll get something of his own— a succulent or something— keep it in the Airstream.

Alex calls him eleven days in. 

“Hey,” he says easily, answering the phone.

“Hey, Guerin,” comes the reply. Just hearing Alex’s voice makes him grin.

“Hey, so, this talk we’re going to have when you get back,” he starts off. “Any chance you want to have it over dinner? Because Rosa owes me a favor, and I figure she can pay me back with some enchiladas or something, and maybe we take them out to the desert in the back of the truck, clear the air and all?” He lets the toe of his boot dig at the dust. He’s not sure is Alex will go for it or not, but he has to ask, right?

“I…” Alex sounds conflicted.

“Or not,” he says hastily. “It’s just an idea, you know? Whatever you need.”

Alex’s voice is dull and clipped on the other end of the phone. He sounds like some sort of military robot as he utters his next words.

“Guerin, I’m being deployed.”

Michael goes silent. What the fuck does Alex mean, he’s being deployed? Where the fuck do they need soldiers so bad that they’re pulling the a guy with a prosthetic leg? Who the fuck thinks this is a good idea? He doesn’t say any of that though. He holds it together, has enough presence of mind to at least ask some questions.

“How long?”

“Twenty four months. Backdated to last week.”

That part fucking hurts. Somewhere along the way, Alex has known or suspected that something like this is going to happen, and he’s said nothing, given him no warning.

“Where?” he bites out, trying to keep a leash on how much he hates this. “Doing what?”

“It’s classified. I…I can’t tell you.” There’s a hitch in his voice there, but Michael isn’t interested in Alex feeling bad when he’s the one who stayed instead of getting out when he was supposed to.

“That must be convenient,” he snaps. “Answer every hard question with “It’s classified.” No one can argue with that, can they?”

“Guerin, that’s not fair. I didn’t ask for this,” Alex protests

“Are you even coming home?” he interrupts.

“I mean… eventually, yes. Leave is probably going to be difficult to get approved for awhile, but I can appeal…”

“Don’t bother.” Michael says flatly. “Do you duty. Serve your country and the uniform that you care so damn much about. Your plants will be here whenever you do actually come home, because I actually bother to keep my word. Just don’t expect me to be here, waiting on you when you get back. I’m done with that crap.”

He hangs up the phone to the sounds of Alex’s protests, and proceeds to resolutely ignore it when Alex calls back. Both times.

  
He doesn’t pick up when Alex tries to call the next day, either. He lets it go to voicemail, almost deletes it un-listened to. In the end he just leaves it, ignores it. He doesn’t respond to Alex’s texts, but he doesn’t delete them either. He’s pissed and feels it’s justified. But also… Alex is probably going into danger. The military doesn’t just call soldiers up in secret, urgently send them on two-year missions they can’t talk about because they’re chilling out at a base in Germany playing Eucher or whatever. If the worst happens…well, he can’t delete those messages, can’t lose access to the last words Alex ever said to him. He knows too much about loss now, knows from unwanted experience that he’ll fixate on having tossed them aside. 

Alex had damn well better stay alive so he can delete them one day.

He drives out to Alex’s house, scowls at the front door. The plants inside are fine, and he’s not going in. But the peppers and the other things in the garden need water. And Alex might be willing to let whatever they have die on the vine, but that’s not fucking happening to this garden. Michael is already invested.

While he stands there, watering with the hose in the morning light that’s already a little brighter and a little warmer than it’s ideal to water under, his thoughts start drifting to how he could do this better- not have to come out here every day, not have to get up at the ass crack of dawn or feel guilty about wasting precious water. He starts gaming it out, looking at it practically. If you could set up some kind of drip irrigation system, that would take care of a lot of the hands-on work every day. 

He plays with the physics of it in his head, thinks through practical things like materials and pitfalls.

Later that day, he scrounges around the junkyard, finds some things he’s pretty sure he can use- PVC pipes, a few lengths of hose that should at least work well enough to test his idea. A little tinkering, a little refining, and a couple days later he’s got a rudimentary drip irrigation system that he’s installing in the garden at Alex’s.

He swings by once a day still, to keep the system running, turn the water on and off, make sure it’s working right. It’s quiet enough out there— some traffic that can be heard from the road, but honestly pretty peaceful, with the plants there that rustle in the winds and everything set back behind the adobe walls. He likes sitting out there, but he doesn’t want to deal with dragging Alex’s patio furniture around, so about a week after Alex’s last call, he hauls a lawn chair up into the bed of of the truck and sets it out in back by the garden. It’s yellow, layers of paint chipping back to show that in previous lives it had been light blue and before that a sort of spring green before being abandoned. A new bolt to hold it together and it’s good as new, and while it doesn’t exactly fit Alex’s aesthetic, it looks cheerful back there, in a worn-in sort of way that Michael prefers. He doesn’t have to worry about getting dust on the damn thing either, because it’s not fussy- unlike white cushions. He side-eyes those every time he comes by, considers putting them away somewhere. He’s petty enough to leave them there though. Alex can buy new ones if it matter so much to him.

Another week on and the peppers are doing really well. Almost too well— it’s more than he can use, more than he can foist off on Max and Isobel. He brings some to the Crashdown, and Arturo happily accepts that day’s harvest. He says he can bring more the next day, and Arturo laughs, tells him to give him at least a day to use up the ones he already brought. Rosa tells him that if he’s trying to get rid of produce, he should take them to a community food share she knows about.

The food share turns out to be a woman names Emma running the thing out of her garage and a little garden shed, with table of produce set up on her driveway. She’s beyond excited about the peppers, because apparently this has been a bad year for them, and people keep asking her if she has any. He tells her that he’s watching a garden for a friend, doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but he can bring her what he gets. She gets incredibly animated, pulls him around the back of the garage to show him the raised beds they made from salvaged pallets, and have him talk to her wife, Sam, about seeds he can still plant if he wants, and about rainwater collection.

He leaves with seeds and garlic for planting that he feels bad he probably isn’t going to use, because it’s not really his place to take over Alex’s garden, and a pleasant but unsettled sense of how enthusiastic these women are.

When he gets home, there’s an envelope waiting for him. A check, cut from Alex’s bank with a memo line about payment for taking care of the garden. He throws it in the trash, because Alex can go fuck himself if he thinks he can buy Michael’s forgiveness, or his labor. Then he goes to the Pony for a drink.

When he gets to Alex’s house after work the next day, he flips off the security camera on the off chance Alex can see it at some point, and goes to take care of the garden. He glares at the plants, irritated at the gall that Alex has. He stews about the fact that Alex didn’t even ask him if he wanted money, while resolutely avoiding acknowledging that he’s ignored every one of Alex’s messages for the last two weeks, so when would there have been a chance? He doesn’t need money anyway. He’s not doing it for money.

He’s irritated that Alex made this all as cheap and tawdry and transactional as dollars and cents. He should walk away and abandon all of this, let Alex deal with it all months or years down the road. 

Instead, he gets down on his knees and roots around the garden bed, pulling weeds, a task made easier now that the soil isn’t as dry and cracked.

He starts looking things up on his phone. At first, it’s when you would plant the seeds Sam gave him- not that he’s going to do that. Then it’s figuring out what you’d do to the soil first, in order to make things grow better, have a better chance of surviving if you were going to do it. Theoretically, of course. And if he swings by the library one afternoon while he’s picking some things up for Sanders at the hardware store, it’s not like it’s hurting anyone. He goes down into the bunker for awhile to work on some calculations about the ship’s console, but ends up with a list of notes and a design for a rainwater capture system instead.

It’s all theoretical though until the Saturday morning about a month later when Maria shows up at the airstream. She finds him tinkering with a transmission that’s seen better days.

“Hey,” he says, glancing up from his work to greet her

“Hay is for horses, Cowboy,” she says with a smile and her characteristic sass. “Thought you knew that.”

He grins despite himself, sets the wrench aside. He likes that they still have that- the banter and the snark. It took a little while, but… he likes that he didn’t lose her. That not being together didn’t fling them far apart.

“What can I do for you, DeLuca?” He wipes his hands on his jeans.

She boosts herself up on a clear part of the counter, all leather boots and turquoise jewelry with a flowing black lace shawl thing.

“I heard from Alex.”

Michael grunts, reaches for a water.

“He said he hasn’t talked to you in a few weeks. Or actually, that you haven’t talked to him.”

“Don’t want to talk to him.” He narrows his eyes over the bottle as he takes another swig. “Don’t really want to talk about not wanting to talk to him, either. It is what it is.”

“Not here to make you.” She shrugs, movements elegant as ever, no matter what she does. “But he did say you never cashed the check he sent for taking care of his place.”

“I didn’t ask him to pay me. Don’t need him to.”

Maria frowns.

“That’s bullshit, Guerin. We do not allow people with money to exploit our labor without paying for it, even if we happen to like them. Our time and effort deserves compensation. We deserve to get paid. If you don’t want the money, do something worthwhile with it. But don’t sell yourself short.”

Michael sighs. 

“He asked you to talk to me, didn’t he?”

“He did,” Maria admits easily. “But I’d be here telling you you’re a dumbass either way.” She reaches back, digs in the pocket of her faded jeans. “He asked me to give you this. I told him you’d hate it, but he asked in that tone I can’t resist, so…” she shrugs again.

Michael frowns at the folded stack of twenties in her hand.

“Keep it. Use it to cover my bar tab.” He turns away a bit to look for something on the counter She fixes him with a look.

“Do you not even known me?” She gestures with it again. “This is what’s left. He wants to pay you because he knows you’re taking time away from other things to take care of his place, and he has the money. Whether you keep it, or spend it, or give it away, it’s yours to direct, and that’s only fair. He said- and I quote- Maria, I’m not trying to pay him like it’s a job he has to do. I’m just trying to be fair. I hurt him enough by re-enlisting. I don’t want to exploit him now.” She tilts her head, assess him. “And knowing you, I bet you feel like accepting money for something makes it cheap and transactional, right?

He nods, because yeah. She does know him.

“So use the money in service of the thing. Put gas in your truck since you drive up there almost every day. Buy…mulch or shovels or whatever the hell it is you use on a garden. Buy solar lights and spell out “I’m still irrationally pissed at you” in front of his cameras, for all I care. But don’t be stubborn and use up your own hard-won cash to own him on this. If you’re going to be petty, be smart about it.”

“Fine” he grouses, but he takes the cash. He expects she’ll leave after that, mission from Alex done. Instead, she stays for the better part of an hour, hangs out with him while he works and she basks in the sun, filling each other in on everyone else’s gossip and sad stories.

Around four, hours after Maria’s left, he closes the hood for the last oil change he had to do and heads into town. He’s been stewing over an idea all afternoon. Fortunately- and he can’t believe he’s thinking this- Forrest is still at the library. He finds him at his usual place, tidying a tack of books and photocopies of newspaper clippings, like he’s packing up for the day. Michael grabs a chair and spins it around so he can drop into it.

“Hello…” Forrest says, but it comes out more like “What the Hell do you want?”. Which…fair. Ever since things went a place with him and Alex for awhile, Michael’s talked to the guy less than when he used to think of him as Nazi Guy From The Library. And they weren’t exactly swapping recipes back then. Oh well. Time to call this meeting of the Alex Manes Broken Hearts Club to order.

“So. Say I’m taking care of a place for a friend of mine…” he begins.

“You can just say ‘Alex’, you know.” Forrest crosses his cardigan-clad arms in front of his chest, distinctly unimpressed. Michael mostly ignores him, unfairly toned arms and all.

“Well, he’s going to be gone awhile, so I need to do more to care for it than just watering it or whatever. I’m figuring I need like… mulch and manure for compost and all that. And I also figure that, seeing as how your family has a farm and livestock and all, you might have some of that type of thing on hand that you’re willing to sell me for cheap.”

Forrest regards him with narrowed, skeptical eyes for a very long moment before clearly making a decision and switching into a different gear, abruptly standing up and putting the stacks of papers into his accordion file.

“Sure,” he agrees. “We can head over now. You might as well follow me to make sure Wyatt doesn’t take pot shots at your truck and claim he thought he saw a coyote though.”

“I thought he wasn’t supposed to have access to firearms.”

Forrest scoffs.

“I’ve got a scar on my calf from Christmas 1997 and the new BB gun he’d just gotten that wasn’t even supposed to be loaded, let alone down from the shelf in the back closet. Telling that man he can’t have guns just means he has to put some actual effort into getting them.” Forrest shrugs, green strands of hair falling over his forehead. “Slows him down at least though.” He slides the file into his satchel, lifts the books to bring them back to the circulation desk. “He’s not even at the farm most of the time these days, but if he is, he’ll behave better if you’re with me.”

“He actually respects you like that?” Michael can’t help himself for being being incredulous.

“Not the way you mean.” Forrest slings the satchel over his shoulder. “But I carried the type of firearms he fantasizes about in combat, and can strip and reassemble them as fast as he can identify them.” Forrest shoots him a snarky grin. “Not to mention, the last two guns he got ahold of, I surrendered to the Sheriff on his behalf.”

Grudgingly, Michael has to admit that he sees a glimmer of what Alex liked about this man.

Two hours later, the bed of his truck is loaded up with a tarp full of manure, a few bales of straw to store for later, and a few buckets of compost from Forrest’s Aunt’s compost pile. Forrest leans his forearms on the truck, stares across it to meet Michael’s eyes.

“So. You’re doing all this for Alex. Are you two…”

“Definitely not.” Michael doesn’t really care that he’s brusque. “You may have heard he’s not going to be around for awhile.”

”Yeah, Forrest says easily. “Deployments are rough. On soldiers, and on everyone else around them too.”

“Not really included in that.” Michael cuts that line of conversation off at the pass. “Thanks for all this though.” He gestures to the truck bed, peels the agreed upon bills off the stack Maria handed him earlier that day. Forrest regards him placidly.

“Sure you’re not. You’re just doing a guy a favor. Because Alex is the type of guy who lets people do him favors.” 

That hits uncomfortably close to wisdom, so Michael just scowls at him.

“You want the money or not?”

Forrest takes it with an easygoing grin, slides the cash in his back pocket. Michael doesn’t return the hand held up in an approximation of a wave that he gets as he drives off the property. He’s too busy cursing Forrest Long for saying something that makes him have to shove down an acknowledgment that there’s something beside bitterness, spite, and duty that simmers in his chest when he thinks about this project.

The light is fading by the time he makes it back across town, but he drives by Sam and Emma’s anyway. He can hear them, calling to each other in the backyard, packing things away so critters won’t get into the food overnight, but so it’s still accessible in labeled bins to anyone who needs it. He doesn’t get out of the truck right away though. There’s a kid in basketball shorts and a faded white t-shirt looking around the at the table, filling a backpack with bread and peanut butter and apples. Portable things, things that you can live on in a pinch. He’s fourteen or fifteen maybe, a pudgy softness to his face still despite the leanness of his body.

Michael remembers how he’d been at that age. How proud, and defiant, and secretly scared. Anyone who thinks any of that describes him now… they didn’t know what he was holding beneath the surface then. He sees his teenage self in this kid- recognizes the hunch of his shoulders. He stays in the cab of his truck, because nothing would have made him run faster for the beat-up bike there than an adult coming out, scrutinizing, offering help. But once the kids leaves, casting wary glances as he slings on the backpack and pedals away in the twilight, Michel slips from the cab, find Sam and Emma in their yard-turned-garden. He knocks on the side of the garage to get their attention, is greeted warmly.

“Came by to get some gardening advice, figure out what exactly I need to do if I want to start up another bed this late in the year.” He says. He scratches at the back of his neck, trying to make sense of what he’s feeling.” Then I saw this kid out there at the table… almost exactly the kid I was at fifteen, maybe dealing with the same kind of crap I had to deal with and I just…” He sighs, forces himself to look at them. “Nothing like that existed here when I was that age. I could have used it. So… here.” The pulls the rest of Alex’s money from his pocket, offers it to Emma. There’s not all that much left, but it’s enough to help out, he’s sure. Emma’s eyes go wide.

“We can definitely get you that gardening advice,” Sam agrees with a laugh, letting him crack a smile and settle in to a less-awkward purpose.

He stays until darkness actually falls, and they’re looking are garden plans and raised beds by the light of the motion sensor fixture on the side of the garage, Sam or Emma waving periodically to keep it from going out and plunging them into darkness. When he finally leaves, it’s with advice and examples and ideas, both from their garden and from a few blogs and websites that they recommend. Emma also insists he takes a bag filled with several scoops of the fertilizer blend she mixes herself and swears by.

Back at the airstream, he makes himself a box of macaroni and cheese and perches at his desk, making sketches and notes, drawing up tables in the pool of light cast by the lamp.

  
The next day is a day off, and while he usually lets himself sleep in, he’s up with the sun, throwing on jeans and a t-shirt, sliding a jacket over it to ward off the early chill. He debates making coffee, but instead decides that swinging by the Crashdown takes less time. Arturo’s there, pours him his cup of coffee himself and talks about how nice the peppers were. He ends up telling Arturo a little more about the garden, that he’s thinking he’ll expand it a little. Arturo tells him with a wink to keep the Crashdown in mind if he needs anyone to sample the produce. He promises he will, raising his paper coffee cup like he’s making a toast on the way out the door. Barely eight AM, and he already feels like he’s accomplished something, set himself on a path he likes for the day.

It takes longer than he thinks it will— marking out the spots he wants to dig, amending the soil so it’s not just dry, cracked desert dirt and caliche that’s too alkaline…with not enough nitrogen, potassium, or a whole host of other nutrients. It’s back-breaking work, and filthy to boot. There’s no escaping the scent of manure either, and he’s going to need a hell of a shower at the end of the day, but it’s worth it, to see the dirt change. He starts with tools, but at a certain point, he decides it makes more sense to get more detail-oriented. Once that happens, he’s on his hands and knees in the dirt, mixing it all up hand, digging in with smaller tools to really mix things up the right way. He takes his boots off to protect them, ends up stripping off his shirt as the sun gets higher. He gets lost in the feeling of the dirt between his fingers and toes, waking back up so it’s ready to support life again. He works for hours, taking occasional breaks for water, pleased with how the bed is taking shape.

He’s down to less than a tenth of the intended space in the new bed to go when he’s yanked from his reverie by the sound of a car door slamming, and Isobel appearing around the corner.

“It didn’t make sense until just now, you being into gardening.” She announces, setting her sunglasses atop her head as she steps into a patch of shade. “But now I get it. It’s all an elaborate thirst trap to get Alex to go AWOL and come back early when he sees you rolling around in the dirt like a gay Farmers Only boudoir photoshoot.”

He glares at her, resting his arm on his dirt-smeared knee as he kits back to catch his breath.

“Pretty sure that’s not Alex’s aesthetic,” He says acerbically.

“Pretty sure that if you started doing drag shows wearing ballgowns, feather boas, and an Orville Peck mask, that would be Alex’s new aesthetic.” She counters. He rolls his eyes.

“Why are you even here?”

She nods toward the Crashdown takeout bag she left sitting on the table.

“Arturo and I agreed that you needed lunch. He said you were working on Alex’s garden today.” She glances around “This, uh… looks like more than just plant sitting.”

“Yeah, well, Alex decided to be gone a little longer than ten days. So I figure, fair’s fair.”

“So this is what? Revenge planting?”

“Maybe.” He shoves his hair off his face. “Got a problem with that?”

Isobel hold her hands up in a gesture of surrender.

“No arguments here, cowboy.” And in fact, she marches right over to his rescued chair and plunks herself down in it, looking surprisingly at home in her turquoise western blouse with embroidered roses twining intricately around horseshoes on the shoulders. “What are you planting?”

So he tells her, using the hose to wash his hands and forearms free of dirt, using his telekenesis to float the bag of food over and digging in, realizing belatedly that he’s actually ravenous.

She nods, looks around like she’s envisioning things as he describes them, asks questions, but doesn’t grill him on any of it. He appreciates it, knows that she’s trying to be a good sibling. It means a lot. Though she does tell him she needs to plant more flowers.

And by the time time the sun is setting that day, he has a whole new garden bed ready, watered, and planted with seeds that will hopefully be garlic, onions, beans, beets, carrots, and broccoli when all is said and done. Before he leaves, he picks an armload of produce, plans to sort it into bags to split between Arturo and the Free Food Share.

The next weekend, he sets days aside to work on the garden as well. He’s got a drip irrigation system set up in the new garden bed now, but he thinks he’s also worked out how he can incorporate a raised bed. He’d asked Sanders and Arturo to be on the lookout for some pallets he can rip apart for wood, so he spends his Saturday morning collecting them and hauling them to Alex’s, where he set to work ripping them apart into usable boards- hammering out the nails, using his telekinesis to pull the most stubborn ones free. He stops work when he hears not one, but two cars pull into the driveway, grips the hammer warily.

He’s mostly relieved to see that it’s Isobel, and that this time she’s brought Kyle and Rosa with her.

“Turns out, I was right. You need to plant flowers too.” She’s grinning, triumphant. “Something about needing bees and insects to carry pollen around. So!” she opens the trunk of her car to reveal two massive pots brimming with flowers, and an identical set in Kyle’s care.

“Because these two need excuses for sibling time, and I like being right, I present to you native flowering plant species beloved by pollinators and designed to help your garden project while also giving it more visual appeal, each of them designed by one of us! It was like Build-a-Bear, but for planters.”

“Oh, and don’t worry,” Rosa tells him dryly. “She already took pictures for Instagram.”

They help bring the pots around, Isobel and Rosa deciding where they should go, with the consideration of an artist and a decorator that’s somewhat lost on Michael. Isobel finds out what he’s doing with the pallets and decides it looks like fun and she wants to rip board apart with her mind, so they all stay a little while, helping him measure and position boards, sink posts into the ground so the bed can be built to last. It surprises him to realize that it feels…good to have help with it, to feel connected.

  
The next day, there’s a piles of bags of soil on the driveway, with a note from Max saying that Isobel told him to drop them off. A few weeks later, Max himself actually comes by, looks at the garden, invites Michael out to his place for a beer. Sitting in the Adirondack chairs, Max looks out in the distance, talks about how he’d thrown himself into a couple of projects when Liz left, how he gets it- the need to stay busy, the need to have something that’s all yours, even while it’s still part theirs. He gets it, can talk about it better than Michael ever could…but then, Max is the one who’s always had access to the words.

  
The garden flourishes. He adds more things as time goes by- a coldframe made from old windows that Isobel had found somewhere and picked up for him as she texted him excited pictures of things from half a dozen social media sites that he could use them to make… a series of rain barrels that harvest rainwater and feed it back into the drip irrigation system…another raised bed, and then a little greenhouse to protect plants from the colder winter weather and snow. 

He keeps giving away produce, keeps planting. He learns to start seedlings and then transplant them, builds a greenhouse wit the money Alex keeps sending to Maria. He makes improvements to the design, realizes that a geodesic dome shape makes the most sense and rebuilds the entire thing the next spring, working in a a heating and cooling system that stores and releases heat using an old car radiator and a fan he scrounges from the junkyard. Max brings over his dad’s old woodworking tools to help him lay the floor and build the tables inside. He shows up one day with a couple of benches he’s built too- some of those projects he works on without Liz around. Rosa paints them in bright colors with intricate designs, and they install them around the garden.

She spends a lot of time out at the garden, actually. She paints out there, but also makes him teach her how to weld and solder, spends entire days out there building sculptures out of pieces of scrap metal that he brings her from the junkyard, until there’s a dragon that protects the garden, and a host of tiny metal creatures- frogs and lizards,butterflies, crows, an owl, and some sort of folkloric creatures he doesn’t even recognize that nestle in among the plants and pathways. She makes silverware into bright shinning flowers too, with dragonflies and hummingbirds made of spoons and knives coming to drink their metal nectar, and mosaics out broken ceramics and brightly colored glass from empty liquor bottles Maria brings rinsed and cleaned from the Pony. Rosa says its one way she has of taking control over the things that want to control her.

He sends them all home with produce, donates it to Arturo and to Sam and Emma, lets Arturo feed him things he cooks up with the bounty from the garden. He lets Kyle take things home to his mother, because it can’t hurt to have the sheriff take on a new perspective as to what he’s doing with his life. He plants herbs because Sanders likes them, builds Isobel a trellis and lets her plant some type of climbing flowering vine because she won’t stop going on about it, grows greens all winter in the coldframe and the greenhouse.

He gets everyone to help out the Free Food initiative too— helps them build a shed, installs some better lighting for them, gets Isobel to donate a refrigerator and a microwave that he builds a housing for, so they can have meals for people who don’t have ways to cook. Isobel takes up the cause, organizes a program with the Crashdown where you can add a donated meal to you bill, takes care of delivering those meals to the community fridge most days. She gets Maria involved, helps them out with their social media crap, which leads to the two of them planning some type of free job-preparation seminar and jobs fair that they’re pushing the Chamber of Commerce to sponsor.

  
When Liz comes back for good, she comes to see the garden, stops in the entrance with her hands brought together to cover her mouth in astonishment. She pulls him into and embrace, smiling with tears in her eyes- calls him Mikey and tells him what a beautiful thing he’s made. He knows it, but wrapping his arms around her, tucking his head against her black hair is the first time he lets himself get emotional about it, tears prickling at his eyes. 

He’s built a garden, because it was as close to building the life he’d dreamed of that he could get, without the man he ached to build that life with.

He cries because he’s proud of what he’s done…and because he finally accepts that this entire garden is a love letter to Alex Manes, to what he himself is willing to put on the line. It’s about being willing to put down roots, take a risk of losing something. It’s about trusting in something good surviving, even if the weather turns or something unpredictable happens. And having realized that he’s grown an entire love letter, he also realizes that he probably needs to actually let the person it’s for read it.

  
That day, after Liz leaves, Michael opens his phone and sends the first message he’s sent to Alex in over a year. It’s a picture of the garden.

  
He knows that Alex knows about the garde, and not just because he’s funded it in his own back yard. He’s seen Rosa videochatting with Alex from the garden, showing him current art projects, or things that are growing and changing. But he’s steered clear of any opportunity to talk to Alex, sent him clear messages to fuck off. He does also admit that telling someone to fuck off and refusing to talk to them for a year is a somewhat confusing way of communicating that you love them and want to spend the rest of your life figuring out how to be with them, if that’s what they want too. No one has ever claimed he has great communication skills. 

But every plant he’s put in the ground here has let him put his own roots down too. Now, he’s anchored enough that he can admit his fears without curling in on himself and shuttering his heart to protect himself, lashing out like a wounded animal…or sensing Alex is about to do the same and beating him to the punch.

After the picture he sends thought you might like a tour.

  
It’s slow, rebuilding trust. Alex doesn’t have much free time to text, but maybe that’s a good thing— it lets them ease back into knowing each other, building up trust, layering in forgiveness for a hundred slights in the past decade-plus, make apologies and provide explanations for the prick of spikes and thorns that have made up their defenses since before they even really knew each other, baggage they’ve had since they were young. There are things they have to talk in code around, since even the most secure lines and strongest encryptions aren’t secure enough for either of their liking, and Alex is still on a mission…but even so, Michael feels his heart unclenching in his chest, the reality of the love he can’t shake stops bringing pain with every breath.

Two months in, they’re texting, and Alex asks if he can call. Michael stays there in the chair at the garden until the stars come out and his coat doesn’t do anything to keep him warm, but he doesn’t care. He looks up at the stars, and instead of wondering what’s out there to explain his life…he wonders if Alex can see the stars from where he is right now. He debates asking, but figures that information might be embargoed. Instead, he takes the gamble that Alex is in the Northern Hemisphere, asks him if he’s ever able to see Polaris. Alex hesitates.

“Sometimes,” he says cautiously.

“Good,” Micahel says. “Because I’m looking up at it right now as we’re talking, and I’m thinking of you. And next time you see it, you can remember that I left that thought up there for you to find. Like a celestial answering machine.”

Alex chuckles at the image.

“What’s the message?” he asks softly

Michael licks his lips, nerves eating at him, making him shiver even more in the cold.

“That I believe one day, we’re going to have our roots set down in the same place, actually get to grow together. No matter how many droughts we have to go through to get there.” It’s tantamount to a declaration of love- or admission that the feeling is still alive for him.

“We’re products of the desert, Guerin,” Alex tells him gently. “We know how to survive a drought.” And that’s a declaration right back, in so many words.

  
Months go by like that- text message chains, the very rare phone call…and Michael counts down the weeks until Alex should be back from deployment.

And then, one day about two months before Alex is supposed to get home, Michael is in the garden- he’s mostly done for the day, but he’s puttering because Liz needs something, and asked if he could wait until she got there—and he hears a voice.

“Looks even better in person.”

It’s Alex’s rich, warm timbre…and that’s because Alex himself is standing at the entrance to the garden. Michael gapes at him, the plastic pots he was organizing for transplanting falling out of his suddenly nerveless fingers, and he doesn’t even reach out reflexively to catch them with his telekinesis.

“Alex…” he says, helplessly. He doesn’t even have any other words, his mind is just a blank, static fog, because Alex is standing here a full two months early.

“The mission ended, and they approved my request to honor all the leave I’d been denied that couldn’t roll over. I found out as soon as I got debriefed at Ramstein, managed to get on the next flight out. Took a couple transfers, didn’t have much chance to let anyone know, but… I’m here. Leave granted until the end of my deployment, stationed here in Roswell thereafter, until my enlistment is up.”

Michael gapes at him, wonders why he isn’t already kissing this man. Wonders if he did this all wrong because he’s not already kissing him, and if he’s sending the wrong signals. But Alex is smiling that soft, rueful smile of his, and Michael doesn’t remember how to move his feet.

“I um…brought you something, though.” Alex reaches for his knapsack, pulls out a box from the very top. He comes closer, lifts the lid so Michael can see. Inside is a dried, brown ball of vegetation that looks more like tinder for a campfire than anything else. Michael, reaches for it, his fingertips brushing it reverently, because he recognizes it, know what it is. “It’s a-”

“Rose of Jericho,” Michael breathes out. Alex nods.

“When it’s out of water, it curls up like this, looks like it’s dead. But it’s not.” Alex searches his eyes, the symbolism of what he’s saying both beautiful and painful in its clarity. “And when it finds water again, it opens back up, turns green again. It keeps living, even through conditions that seem like they should kill it. The symbolism…seemed relevant.”

All at once, Michael remembers how to move again, because he’s surging forward, kissing Alex like his life depends on it. Alex clutches at him as their bodies press together, kisses him like it’s oxygen and he’s suffocating from the lack of it. There’s a sound that’s almost like a sob, a desperate, strangled gasp, and he’s honestly not sure which one of them it comes from, because all at once the months and years of not having this, not having each other are almost unbearable. He needs this, wants this, is ready to tear both of their clothes off right here out in the open in order to leave no barriers between them, but Alex has the presence of mind to gasp, “Come inside with me.”

“Yes,” he gasps against Alex’s lips, communicates it even more emphatically without words, because he’s screaming it in the way he can’t tear himself away from Alex’s body, shouting it with the way his hands thread through Alex’s hair, the abject hunger of his kiss.

He lets himself be led to the front of the hosue, where Alex opens the door, shoves his abandoned duffel inside, and then shoves Michael up against the wall. They can’t get naked fast enough, cant bear not to have their hands on each other, and when they finally make it to Alex’s bed they don’t lave it for a good sixteen hours.

  
The next morning, waking up beside Alex, feels more right than anything has in a long, long time. It leaves Michael smiling, and much as he wants to stay cocooned in Alex’s bed, there’s something he wants to do slightly more. He slips out from under the covers, foregoes finding his underwear to slip his jeans up over his hips and pads to the kitchen to start some coffee. 

He steps out the sliding door from Alex’s office into the garden, appreciating the feeling of early morning air on his bare skin. There, on the potting bench, he finds the little white box with the Rose of Jericho, brings it into the greenhouse where he has a shallow saucer for putting under potted plants, and a watering can of water. He sets it up, pours the water, and nestles the Rose of Jericho in the little pool he’s made, lets it take it first drink.

It’s at that moment that he sees Alex approaching the open door of the greenhouse, two mugs of coffee steaming in his hand.

“Morning,” he says, handing over one of the mugs. 

“Morning,” Michael agrees, unable to keep the sunny smile off his face, watches the spark grow even brighter in Alex’s eyes. It feels like the most natural thing in the world to kiss him, slow, and sweet until heat begins to rise between them. Deliberately, Alex sets his coffee down in a clear space, leans his hand against the doorframe, gives it a little push.

“Out of curiosity, how sturdy is this structure?” he asks, assessing it critically.

“Pretty sturdy,” Michael tells him. “It’s based on triangles, and it’s help up though all the winds we had this year. Why do you ask?” he questions, getting a glimpse of the answer as Alex draw him in, presses his back against the door frame with a devious grin.

“Oh…just…reasons,” he says, sinking to his knees with his hand on the button of Michael’s jeans.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the song "The Alchemist", which begins:
> 
> "In the Desert, where al most nothing grows  
> You'll find the most beautiful rose...  
> Takes its name from Jericho,   
> A Miracle of life
> 
> I know a place, I can't deny...  
> Where even a Jericho Rose would die.  
> The Desert of your Heart's  
> Where I am trying to survive"
> 
> I will also note that what Alex brings is actually a False Rose of Jericho, which is native to North America, and easier to obtain here. It acts more as a tumbleweed, and can survive even it its root structure is damaged. All in all, it seemed like the more apt metaphor.
> 
> And yes, while I was writing this, I *did* go online and finally order myself the Rose of Jericho I've been wanting to get for the last decade or so.


End file.
